On 1st of January 2018 Edward Lemke started his professorship for synthetic biophysics at the faculty of biology at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and was appointed as adjunct director at the Institute for Molecular Biology (IMB). Lemke is one of the leading experts in the field of intrinsically disordered protein research, as which he also led an Emmy-Noether-group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and won an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2015 as well as an ERC Advanced Grant in 2022. Through innovation in the methodical approach and the combination of chemical, biophysical and cell biological expertise an important contribution to the field was made. Lemke is the spokesperson of the DFG priority program for molecular mechanisms of phase separation (SPP2191) and the DFG collaborative research centre for polymer concepts in cellular function (SFB1551). As a GFK-Fellow he will pave new ways for the interdisciplinary life science research in Mainz with his work on the dark proteome. Lemke has also been named as a 2025 Biophysical Society Fellow for demonstrating excellence in science and contributing to the expansion of the field of biophysics.